


White Picket Fences

by inquisitioned



Category: Latin Hetalia - Fandom
Genre: AU: Run, F/M, pretty much the best AU fight me, trans themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inquisitioned/pseuds/inquisitioned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miguel was a simple man of simple means, and this was anything but simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Picket Fences

It had been a sunny day when Miguel drove Manuela to the hospital to get her first injection, and he’d held her hand on top of the gear shift the entire way there. He talked about his dreams as a man with stars in his eyes; a little house away from the chaos of their broken city, with a front porch and a white picket fence, a beautiful girl in a beautiful dress, with her lips drawn into a warm smile. 

Manuela was silent as Miguel chattered, her mind transfixed upon the task ahead, the first transformation in a metamorphic series, but Miguel’s words were vivid in her mind, painted pictures, things of hope and joy and being home in every sense of the word.

By the time they arrived at the hospital, she was holding his pinky. When the needle punctured her skin, she held Miguel’s hand until his knuckles were white, and imagined a little house by the sea. 

—

It was a sunny day when Miguel slammed the door and swore he’d never come back. 

They fought, they screamed at each other until they were hoarse and blue in the face; Manuela was different, she was a shell, bitter and hollow and cold. The only constant was the fact that nothing was the same anymore, and when she screamed and told him she’d rather die than spend another second in his company, that he just didn’t understand, that he’d never understand, Miguel knew he wouldn’t. 

He spat back that he didn’t know how he ever thought they’d be happy, and she told him she despised him. 

The “I wish I’d never met you!” he shouted as he slammed the door tasted bitter on his tongue.

—

”You know, you can’t just sit there and mope forever.”

Miguel lifted his head off the table in his beat down old kitchen to see his roommate, Luciano. (Luciano , not Luciana, keeping these names straight was confusing and god, he tried so hard but all he wanted to do was throw something across the room and make everything normal again) The Brazilian was holding a little blue and white china bowl, filled with brigadeiro batter and a spoon, and he put on the table beside Miguel, pulling up a chair beside him. “Says who?”

“Just let her be mad, seriously.” Luciano shook his head, putting the silver spoon in Miguel’s hand, “It’ll take a few days, but she’ll be fine. Trust me, I know her.”

The Peruvian’s stomach churned—it started as a low, gurgling chill, and as Luciano spoke, he felt the great monster bubble and heat, boiling until he was clutching the edge of the table until his knuckles ached. The words were like a storm, whipping across his brow and clouding his judgement until the words snapped free of his mouth like a bolt of lightning. “You know her?! What the hell are you trying to say?!” 

Surprise crossed Luciano’s face, but before he could open his mouth to respond, Miguel was off, standing up and slamming his hands on the table so hard the bowl rattled. “Of course you know her! You, Martín, everyone in this entire world knows her. And you know who doesn’t?! Obviously me! I’m not a part of your little club, and I never will be, because I don’t have any damn clue how to interact with any of you! I get it, you’re close, you’re stupid fucking close and I’m done! Go date her, I don’t fucking care anymore!”

“Miguel—”

Kicking the table for good measure, Miguel made his way across the apartment and slammed the door to his room, falling on his bed with a huff—Luciano followed him and shouted that he was being an idiot at the wooden door. 

By then, he’d put his head in his hands, and was trying to push the red away from his vision. 

—

In the morning, Miguel left, too early for Luciano (and too early for himself, really), and took a walk, typing an old number into his phone. One of his old friends from college lived just outside of the city in the suburbs, and he couldn’t help but think it was just what he needed. A break. A break from the craziness, the pronouns, the names, the mental issues and everything abnormal in his life. 

His friend had chirped about having work a veterinary clinic at noon, but they were free until then, and so Miguel found himself walking out past where the old metro line ended and the wild jungle of skyscrapers and into the neatly trimmed lawns of suburbia. Francisco was successful—he’d stayed in school when the others had left, and his dreams of opening a veterinary clinic had come to steady girlfriend and steady job fruition. He’d made his way outside of the city and into a little slice of domestic paradise, and Miguel looked up from his phone, asking Francisco for directions, and had to stop at the sight. 

There was a little house on the corner, with a white picket fence. 

For a moment, the words he’d spoken in the car with Manuela came back to him in a flurry—the fence, Manuela in a dress, the way she beamed at him when the shots started to work, a dog, Manuela holding his hand when she fell asleep at night, cooking her dinner, knitting her hats and gloves in the winter, the way she curled into his side when they slept, Manuela. 

He sent the text message back to Francisco that he couldn’t make it, and turned around to call a taxi. 

—

When he put his brassy key in the lock of Manuela’s apartment, he opened the door and ran straight into the girl herself, as if she was just walking out of the apartment. 

Not a word was spoken. Miguel stared at her with his golden eyes wide, and she returned the favor, and not a single apology was uttered—(maybe later tonight, if Miguel pretended to be asleep, he’d hear Manuela whisper the words in his ear in the dark of the night on her crappy bed in the crappy apartment)—but Miguel threw his arms around her waist and Manuela’s head fell into the crook of his shoulder, and it was like nothing had even changed. 

(She told him he had to ask her out again; he did, and for the next month, he continued to do so, spelling out “I love you” with magnets on the fridge.)


End file.
